There’s a quiet design decision underway at Vauxhall. Since turning into part of the Stellantis monolith eight years in the past, shedding its lengthy, lengthy affiliation with Basic Motors, the quotidian British model (and its German sibling Opel) has trucked alongside with out making any large ripples when it comes to design and innovation.
(Picture credit score: Vauxhall)
In a way, it’s all the time been that method. Constantly close to the highest of the gross sales charts right here within the UK, Vauxhall’s key fashions have an aura of the on a regular basis about them, the sliced white bread of the automotive business. While new possession hasn’t precisely turbo-charged the enterprise, the present line-up is slowly shedding that strange picture. Excepting the long-running and best-selling Corsa and Astra fashions, each different Vauxhall is now some flavour of SUV or MPV: Mokka, Frontera and Grandland, and two electrical folks carriers, the Combo Life and Vivaro Life.
(Picture credit score: Vauxhall)
Electrification has crept in quietly – fairly than steam in with a devoted all-electric mannequin, all fashions can be found as electrical or hybrid (and in some instances ICE solely). The Grandland shares a platform – and therefore its fundamental proportions, underpinnings and a good diploma of {hardware} and software program – with the Peugeot 5008 (amongst others from the Stellantis steady). Which mainly provides you a alternative: would you like studied Gallic eccentricity or Anglo-German simplicity?
(Picture credit score: Vauxhall)
Spending time with the Vauxhall Grandland Electrical GS was not an particularly memorable expertise. It’s an enormous automobile, bluffly good-looking in the best way it makes no try to disguise its bulk. Up entrance, there’s a body-spanning mild bar that’s centred on a backlit Vauxhall Griffing badge. The rear can be low-key, with solely an illuminated Vauxhall badge including a bit of glitz.
Vauxhall Grandland dashboard
(Picture credit score: Vauxhall)
The general takeaway is that this isn’t a automobile geared toward extroverts. Behind the scenes, Vauxhall is readying the re-launch of its ‘GSE’ badge, the marginally tamer efficiency indicator that after battled with GTIs and Turbos when it adorned tuned variations of automobiles just like the Astra, Monza and Corsa. GSE will probably be a step on from GSe, or ‘Grand Sport Electrical’, which was first reanimated again in 2022.
The Vauxhall Grandland has a spacious inside with a glazed roof
(Picture credit score: Vauxhall)
Will the Grandland be a part of the brand new GSE membership? Maybe. There was a Grandland GSe again in 2023, however that was a plug-in hybrid. Like each different EV in the marketplace, the Grandland GS proven right here doesn’t really feel notably gradual due to the moment energy pick-up, however the precise stats (0-62mph in 9 seconds, prime velocity of 109 mph) aren’t precisely earth-shattering. The automobile has an influence ranking of 213PS – examine this to the 280PS of the upcoming Mokka GSE, the automobile that’ll be ushering within the new sub-brand.
(Picture credit score: Vauxhall)
Even when electrified, does the Grandland merely perpetuate the typical, center of the street picture of Vauxhalls previous? A little bit bit. Nonetheless, that’s no dangerous factor. As with so many different shopper merchandise, the comfortable medium is being more and more ignored in favour of supercar-style efficiency, daring retro design or over-egged tech or luxurious.
(Picture credit score: Vauxhall)
The Grandland is and has none of this stuff and is all the higher for it. It’s spacious, quiet, well-equipped, unremarkable and does a greater job of being subtly slightly below the radar than any variety of over-designed Chinese language manufacturers. It doesn’t want the shouty enhancements of a efficiency sub-brand or the visionary complexity of innovative. It’s a easy automobile for an advanced time. Generally that’s all you really want.
Vauxhall Grandland Electrical GS, from £37,605
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